


Victory

by polytropic



Series: Purim Gift 2013 [3]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 06:03:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polytropic/pseuds/polytropic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's amazing how smoothly things go when Rachel gets angry enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Victory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/gifts).



> More canon-typical violence! But none of it graphic this time. Image taken from www.meg-moir.com.

There’s blood on me when I leave the room, and I can see the sight of me hit my friends in their cages like a blow. From their point of view, Visser Six just returned with my blood all over him. 

“Rachel. Oh, God, no,” Cassie chokes. I’d say it’s nice to see that they all care, but it really isn’t, not when they look so gutted.

<Get ready to morph,> I broadcast to them in thought-speak, and thankfully that stops the grief before anyone has a chance to start crying. Marco lets out a whoop of joy that has all the Controllers staring at him, and that’s exactly the kind of distraction I needed to open the cages. By the time the bars swing open I’m not letting out three humans, a bird and an alien; I’m letting out a tiger, a gorilla, a wolf, a hawk and an alien. Better odds.

Overwhelming odds, actually. The humans yell for their reinforcements, but it turns out that we’re on the control bridge of the ship and just happen to be in between them and their communication equipment. However many Hork-Bajir and Taxxons they have in other parts of the ship, they can’t call them to help.

It’s not pleasant, to have to kill all these Controllers. If we could, we’d free them all instead, let the actual enemies wither and die and their slaves go free. But there isn’t time, and right now, it isn’t safe. They’ve all seen that we’re humans; they know our faces. If any of them got caught again, we’d all instantly be dead.

After the battle, we have to figure out what to do with the spaceship. Marco suggests we land it on the White House lawn; instant proof that aliens are among us. Tobias thinks we should keep it, study it to find out about Yeerk technology and weaknesses.

“Where would we keep it, in Cassie’s barn? What happens when it runs out of power and suddenly decides to show up on radar and, incidentally, eyesight? We don’t even understand how its cloaking thing-a-majig works,” Marco says.

“Which means we can’t show it off to the government either, if we don’t know how to make it visible,” Jake points out.

“Fine, fine, I’ll settle for crashing it into the moon.” Marco sighs as if it’s a huge burden on him to hang out with all of us fun-sucking losers.

<I believe I can pilot one of the escape pods successfully back to Earth,> Ax offers, which is the first reasonable suggestion I’ve heard.

“I vote yes on that option. Let’s get out of here before reinforcements arrive,” Cassie agrees quickly.

“Like we couldn’t beat reinforcements if we tried. But actually I’m with Ax, let’s get off this tin can.” I wait for the predictable ‘oh woah Rachel’s running from a fight mark your calendars everybody’ comment from Marco. Nothing comes. I glance at him and he’s looking at me with that weirdly serious face he gets sometimes, in between the jokes. 

“If that’s what you want, let’s do it.”

I start to protest. It feels weird, the almost respectful silence everyone is giving me, like I did something we haven’t all done for each other hundreds of times by now. But Jake just nods, sharply, his Decision-Making gesture.

“Marco’s right. What do we do with the spaceship, Rachel?”

When I think about it, the answer is pretty obvious. “You know, there’s gotta be a self-destruct button somewhere. Let’s blow this thing sky high.”

The explosion makes a pretty awesome sight, even through the wavery glass of the escape pod. Ax is muttering things in thought-speak about how inferior this technology is to Andalite spacecrafts, Marco is cackling about the explosion and Jake is pretending to be so much more mature, Tobias and Cassie are quiet the way they get after fights. Everyone’s here. Everyone’s safe. We made it.

Over the curve of the Earth I see the sun rising. It’s morning.


End file.
